French Officials: Bashar Assad

Bashar Assad: Shoring up support for a military response, French officials said a punitive military response would help shift the balance in a 2 1/2-year-old civil war that was tipping in favour of Bashar Assad, according to Times Colonist. As the Obama administration worked to build its own support ahead of the Congress vote, the U.S. and Israel conducted a joint missile test Tuesday in the eastern Mediterranean in an apparent signal of military readiness. In the operation, a missile was fired from the sea toward the Israeli coast to test the tracking by the country's missile defence system and PARIS - France's government offers a preview Wednesday of what the Obama administration faces next week, as lawmakers debate the wisdom and necessity of a military response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed hundreds. "If you want a political solution you have to move the situation. If there's no sanction, Bashar Assad will say 'that's fine, I'll continue what I'm doing,'" France's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told France Info radio Wednesday morning, hours ahead of the debate. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.